France

  • Raoul Lévy – The Defector AKA L’espion (1966)

    1961-1970DramaFranceRaoul LévyThriller

    Montgomery Cliff (in his last role) plays James Bower, an American physicist visiting West Germany who’s recruited by a shady CIA agent, named Adam, to help them with the defection of a Russian scientist. But an East German secret agent, named Peter Heinzeman, learns of Bower’s meeting with Adam and threatens Bower to mind his own business, while Bower learns of a back story to all this involving stolen microfilm that each side wants.Read More »

  • Michèle Rosier – Mon coeur est rouge (1976)

    1971-1980ArthouseFranceMichèle RosierThe Female Gaze

    Michèle Rosier (1930-2017) was a pioneering fashion designer (she created the vinyl-intensive V de V sportswear label), a journalist who worked as editor of the women’s lifestyle magazine Le Noveau Femina, and an avowed leftist. She also had a 40+ year career behind the camera, directing several documentaries for French television as well as a handful of theatrical features, most famously the George Sand biopic GEORGE QUI?, starring Anne Wiazemsky. Rosier’s cumulative body of work is staggering, and the movies bely an utterly idiosyncratic filmmaking sensibility: wryly funny, curious about people, jazz-suffused (with scores by Mal Waldron, Keith Jarrett and Aldo Romano) and forever interrogating the limits of liberation in post-1968 France.Read More »

  • Michel Deville – Les capricieux (1984)

    Drama1981-1990FranceMichel DevilleTV

    In post-revolutionary France, two neighbouring aristocrats (Nicole Garcia and Jean-Pierre Marielle) embark on a dangerous game when they agree to help a Polish agent.Read More »

  • Dominik Moll – Seules les bêtes AKA Only the Animals (2019)

    2011-2020CrimeDominik MollFranceThriller

    Quote:
    A woman disappeared. After a snowstorm, her car is discovered on a road to a small remote village. While the police don’t know where to start, five people are linked to the disappearance. Each one with his or her own secret.Read More »

  • Orson Welles – Vérités et mensonges aka F for Fake (1973)

    1971-1980ArthouseDocumentaryFranceOrson Welles

    Quote:
    Orson Welles’ free-form documentary about fakery focusses on the notorious art forger Elmyr de Hory and Elmyr’s biographer, Clifford Irving, who also wrote the celebrated fraudulent Howard Hughes autobiography, then touches on the reclusive Hughes and Welles’ own career (which started with a faked resume and a phony Martian invasion). On the way, Welles plays a few tricks of his own on the audience.Read More »

  • Patricio Guzmán – Le Cas Pinochet AKA The Pinochet Case (2001)

    2001-2010DocumentaryFrancePatricio Guzmán

    True story of the saga that was hoped to be the long-awaited justice brought to bear upon Augosto Pinochet, Chilean dictator from 1973 to 1990. In September 1998, Pinochet flew to London on a pleasure trip but experienced back pain and underwent an operation in the London Clinic. Upon waking, he was arrested by Scotland Yard. Could it be that this was to become the first Latin American dictator to answer for crimes while serving as Head of State? After 500 days of house arrest, he nevertheless eventually returned unscathed to Chile, despite the compelling case built against him before & during this period by a young Spanish prosecutor, Carlos Castresana.Read More »

  • Pierre Sauvage – Les armes de l’esprit AKA Weapons of the Spirit (1987)

    1981-1990DocumentaryFrancePierre SauvageWar

    “Weapons of the Spirit,” Pierre Sauvage’s documentary about the extraordinary French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during the Nazi rule in World War II, is like a murder mystery in reverse. It’s an examination of crimes that didn’t take place, of atrocities averted, and in such a way that history itself seems to have been subverted by their absence.Read More »

  • Claire Simon – Premières solitudes AKA Young Solitude (2018)

    2011-2020Claire SimonDocumentaryFrance

    Claire Simon portrays an important time for any individual, from 16 to 18 years of age.

    Set in the Paris suburbs in high school (for those lucky enough to go), teenagers chat after and even during class, sitting in the hallway or outside on a bench, looking at the city below them.

    Claire Simon sets up a cinematic dialog with the teens, speaking about their personal history, their family, but also passions and loneliness.Read More »

  • Alain Cavalier – Pater (2011)

    2011-2020Alain CavalierComedyFrancePolitics

    summary from filmsdefrance.com :
    “For a year, they have let themselves be seen and filmed – a filmmaker and an actor, the president and his first minister: Alain Cavalier and Vincent Lindon. Now you can see them, both in real life and in the fiction which they have created together… “
    Read More »

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